This invention relates to an electronic musical instrument capable of producing a rhythm tone of a percussion instrument by operation of a performance operator such as a pad.
As basic music performances for producing a vibratory sound by playing a drum, there are a roll performance in which a continuous drum sound is produced by beating a drum repeatedly with a rapid stroke and a flam performance in which an ornament is inserted immediately before a main sound by slightly differing timings of beating a drum with two hands. There are conventionally known electronic musical instruments which produce a drum sound by simulating such roll performance and flam performance.
Among such prior art electronic musical instruments are one disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,991,486 in which a roll performance or flam performance is made by striking a pad while depressing an operator which instructs either the roll performance or the flam performance and one disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. Hei3-2898 in which a roll performance or flare performance is made when a pad is struck with a strength exceeding a certain threshold value.
The prior art electronic musical instruments having the above described function have the advantage that they can readily produce an effect of roll performance or flam performance. In these electronic musical instruments, however, a stroke pattern of a percussion instrument of tones sounded in the roll performance or flam performance is constant and, therefore, it is difficult, in the case of some tone colors to make a performance effect of roll or flam correspondent to such tone colors.